


What Our Ghosts Will Say

by Neffie (originalneffie)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: BAMF Arthur, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Time Skips, purple tinted prose, really just a bunch of vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 17:36:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2317754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/originalneffie/pseuds/Neffie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucid dreaming increases clarity of memories, and that is all they have to build from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Our Ghosts Will Say

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta-ed. I've had this sitting on my hard drive too long. Decided to just suck it up and post it.

“Take care of him for me, won't you Arthur?” Her tone is light, but her voice shakes. Four months pregnant and Mal is just starting to show.

“Always.” Smiling for Mal is always so easy. He leans in and kisses her cheek. Her hair brushes over his eyelids and he breathes her in, places a hand over her stomach, promising all of them. “I'll bring him home.”

She's as beautiful as that spring night so many years ago when she had taken him on one arm, Dom on the other, and led them down parisian streets washed violet in the twilight. Arthur had known before they reached the cafe that he would spend the rest of his life in their service, devoted and loyal to each in their completely different ways. His life would never be his own again.

-

Of course, Arthur is the first call Dom makes, before he even reaches the elevators. His instructions are neat and calm, familiar and cool inside Dom's fevered brain. Arthur has him repeat everything back to him to make sure his mind stays present, tells him he's sending a cleaning crew to the hotel, and that Dom should be gone by the time they get there. He keeps him on the line while he makes other calls, sends e-mails, setting everything into motion while reminding Dom to breathe, keeping him focused on what he had to do. Arthur will take care of everything while Dom makes it to a safe house nearby. No cabs, no credit cards, no ATMs. These are things that should be habit by now, but Dom has a tendency to forget logistics in favor of creation. That's what he has Arthur for.

“Get rid of this phone. Throw it in the next garbage can you pass,” Arthur tells him before disconnecting. He hurls his own against the wall. Then a chair, the picture frame from last Christmas, the glass he had been drinking from when Dom called. Arthur sobs and screams and beats against the walls until his forearms are black and blue. He curses Dom then tries to cover the sound with the shattering of glass on the floor.

For five minutes.

Then he quiets and stills. Splashes some cold water on his face, straightens his tie, and grabs the bags he keeps for just such an emergency, hidden deep in the kitchen cabinets.

When he reaches the safe house, Dom is pacing, both fists in his hair, tangled and pulling. Upon turning and seeing Arthur, his knees go weak beneath him. Arthur catches him, holds him tight against his side as he leads him to the car that is waiting. The sobs are ragged and deafening, his face dark red with the strain of them. He's saying her name over and over again until it loses meaning. Just another noise in Arthur's head.

Dom, selfish bastard that he is, takes all the pain and grief for himself and leaves none for anyone.

–

Eames meets him just outside of Versailles three nights later. Arthur's hands scratch at him, teeth clicking together, tearing at his bottom lip. Ravenous after years of living off the scraps Dominick Cobb leaves behind.

Eames takes the brutality. Absorbs and diffuses it. For each drop of blood Arthur draws from him with teeth and nails, Eames brushes kisses against the inside of Arthur's wrists. Blows cool air over the bruises on his arms. He doesn't try to restrain him, doesn't try to quiet his rage, his violence, his pain. The only words he gives are “Darling, darling,” against Arthur's skin.

–

Arthur is born sticky with sweat and blood shuddering face down on a pallet inside a med-tent in a country the U.S. has no business being in. 

Screams hot and violent in his throat, muted and thin in his ears, still ringing and numb. Acrid taste of burning tires in the air and his hands black with soot. Everything, fucking everything monochromatic and shimmering with heat and pain.

Metal from the vehicle, bone shards from a man who had been sitting in front of the cafe and glass from the cup he had been drinking from. All pulled out of the skin across his upper back.

He is left with medals he tucks away into his sock drawer, useless in their boxes and thick ropes of scar tissue twisting across his shoulder blades, tight and aching with the strain of knitting him together. 

–

The first time he sees Mal, she is sneaking a chocolate cookie off a tea tray. She raises a finger to her lips and winks at him, smiles at him close-lipped as she chews. Miles and Dom have their backs to them, trading a piece of chalk back and forth, adding to something on the board that Arthur can not see. Eames is sitting in one of the rows with a notebook in his hand, rolling a capped pen between the teeth and studying Arthur.

Later, when Mal, in her way, knocks a stack of papers onto the floor, Arthur kneels at her feet dutifully to retrieve them. He lifts his head to see her smiling down at him, her fingers brushing over his forehead. 

Eames speech doesn't falter, but he's watching Arthur out of the corner of his eye with the same strange, soft curiosity. Miles is listening to Eames intently, his cup moving from saucer to lips as smooth and natural as breathing.

Dom is sketching out mazes for Mal, building worlds with his words. Awkward and smitten, the teacup clumsy and fragile in his oversized hands. The sun spilling through the high windows and spinning dust into gold between them. Eyes bright with wonder at dreaming. All possibilities and romantic notions, rebuilding minds into beautiful cathedrals.

Arthur studies the Escher print on the wall, watches the discussion reflected on the dark screen of the television next to it. Eames and Miles are whispering sharp and serious to each other with a file between them. Eames stutters too loud over the word “volunteer” and Arthur pretends not to notice the clattering of porcelain. Eames spits out the word “Americans” with spite, then meets his eyes in the reflection with a look that is almost apologetic. 

He will see that look again, years later, in Munich just before Eames runs out in the middle of a job. “Nothing personal, Darling. Just business.”

–

The first dream Arthur enters with Mal is filled with soft light filtered through thick green leaves. Small white flowers drift down from the branches and land weightless on his sleeves. Mal's hand is small and warm when she takes his and leads him down the path towards the shore. The breeze off the lake is cool and clean, carrying the sounds of laughing children from somewhere he can't see.

He wakes to Mal's secretive smile. “In the legend my father told me when I was small, King Arthur never died. He still sleeps alone underneath a hill, waiting to be awoken.” He shivers as she slips the needle from his vein.

–

On the 32nd floor of a hotel in Prague, Arthur is trying not to think about falls from hotel windows. Cobb has been on the run for six months and this is the fourth job they have completed since. It's the second time Arthur has seen Mal in Cobb's mazes. It has left his mouth sour and his stomach aching.

There is a knock at his door and Arthur answers with gun in hand. Eames (snow in his hair, bruise on his jaw, bourbon on his breath) smiles with it aimed at his forehead.

“You're supposed to be in Syria.” Arthur clicks the safety back on.

“Yes, well.” is all Eames's gives him as he invites himself in. boots are wet and muddy and leave tracks in the carpet on his way to the bedroom.

In the morning the tracks in the carpet are still there. On the coffee table there is an empty pack of rolling papers, stray sprinkles of tobacco, and a cocktail napkin where Eames has scribbled something illegible even without it being written in Arabic.

This is their rhythm. Arthur cleans up the messes Eames leaves behind. Every time Eames gives a smile and “Ta” before flying back out the window like Peter Pan.

–

Seven years after that promise, he finds himself again in Paris. He buys black coffee and one of the pastries Mal loved but rarely let herself indulge in. “Only for special celebrations,” she would tell him in a hushed voice, like they were children sharing secrets.

If this doesn't count as a victory, it's the closest thing he's had in recent memory. Fischer-Morrow dissolved, Dom back home with James and Phillipa. Arthur can go back to considering himself a man of his word.

He stops on the bridge and looks out on the Seine. Tearing the uneaten pastry into tiny pieces and dropping them for the pigeons to bicker over.

It leaves his fingers sticky. He raises them to his mouth and licks the sugar from them. Thumb still pressed against his lower lip, he pauses. It's been years since he's allowed himself such a childish indulgence.

Unbidden as always, in his mind is Eames and how he would be positively giddy to see Arthur do something so out of character. 

Eames's with his crooked smile. Taste of his skin sweet and harsh, like clove and ginger, lingering on Arthur's tongue. Chapped hands warm, stretching broad and dark over his hipbones, gliding palms flat over his ribs with Eames's crippled finger trailing alongside like an afterthought. The smell of expensive tobacco from cigarettes rolled with quick, thief fingers when Eames cups them around the base of his skull and pulls him in, afraid Arthur might refuse if he doesn't insist.

Arthur pulls out his mobile and thumbs the keys without needing to look.

“Arthur.” He doesn't even know what the call is about, but god damned if Eames doesn't sound like the cat that ate the canary.

“Where are you?”

“Monaco.” There's a pause and a swallow of something aged and expensive. Something that burns so that Eames clears his throat. “Losing Saito's money.”

“I'll be there tomorrow.”

His laugh is low and natural. “And it's not even my birthday.”

Arthur disconnects without giving him the satisfaction of a reply. Eames voice is lingering warm in his ear and he feels the stirrings of a smile. It feels foreign and a little clumsy, an ache that reminds him of stretching his legs after a 20 hour flight.

–

Eames stands by a large dead tree, squints against the wind and hunches down into that same dark green peacoat he had worn in Prague.

Arthur is wearing the same suit he had gone under in, his posture as perfect as it always is.

The desire to make Arthur uncomfortable, to unsettle him, flares hot low in his chest. 

He's so tired of waiting for Arthur to decide. 

Eames can shape himself into anything, become anyone. He could be whatever Arthur wanted if only he would tell him what it was.

“Is this what you want?” in Mal's french lilt, beautiful and petite in a tight black dress with one strap slipping off her shoulder. Slinking over to Arthur, looking up at him through thick lashes. The smell of lavender and powder.

“Stop this, Eames.” Arthur grates out.

“Or is it just that you don't love anyone but yourself?” Arthur's own face sneers back at him.

Then Eames is on the ground wearing his own face again, blood pouring from his nose. Arthur's hand aches, feels dazed, as Eames stands and brushes himself off. He wipes under his nose with the back of his hand, only to smear and spread the stain.

“Projections and forgeries are the closest you're ever going to get, darling. Do you want to know why? The Mal that you remember? She doesn't exist. She never did. She couldn't have.” 

The ground starts to tremble. Arthur watches a piece of the horizon crumble and drop away.

Eames watches Arthur.

“Have fun chasing ghosts with Cobb. Send me a postcard from Limbo, won't you?”

Arthur lifts eyes to the sky, wondering at its intentions when the wind starts to pick up. There are voices, angry and many, heading towards them. “Eames...” he starts, with no real idea of what to say.

“What? What is it you want Arthur?” Eames sounds defeated as he turns towards the newly formed cliff.

“You know what I want...” For the first time in all the years Eames has known him, Arthur sounds lost.

Eames flinches at the uncertainty, turns away from the strangeness of it coming from Arthur's mouth. “I need more than that, Darling.” his voice should be drowned out by the crashing sound of waves, but this is his dream.

“What then?” Arthur sounds genuinely confused, with the slightest hint of pleading. It's worse than the uncertainty.

Eames smiles, fond and sad, when he looks back. “Specificity.” he says, and steps over the edge.

–

When Eames forges Arthur, he thinks about the smell of soft worn leather and dark coffee, rich and familiar. The smirk, the rare dimpled smile that almost makes him look his age. Hotel lamps and moonlight and candles all reflecting off his skin differently, shadows slip-sliding with him as he moves. The strength in his hands when he pins Eames's wrists above his head. The soft low murmurs that build out of his chest and come forth to vibrate against Eames's collar bone. His eyes holding Eames in place as surely as anything else. Silk tie dragging over Eames's bare chest. Fully dressed while he strips Eames down to nothing. The flash of his perfect, straight, white teeth and the way they scrape over his skin.

It's hollow but real enough to hurt.

–

Arthur kills two men to reach a cell that isn't much but crumbling cement walls with a dirt floor. A small, well-placed explosive could have easily put a hole through the outside wall with a reasonable amount of safety, but Arthur prefers subtlety. Flashy displays are much more Eames's style. Eames would have blown the whole place to rubble, just for the sake of it.

Eames is boneless on the ground in pants that are too long, covering his bare feet. The third guard only has time to look surprised before Arthur hits him in the throat. It isn't immediately lethal, but it incapacitates, drives him choking and gasping to his knees.

Arthur takes his time checking Eames's condition, making sure there is nothing life threatening. He opens and removes the heavy, iron shackles around wrists and ankles, careful with the hands that have been mangled to prevent Eames from picking the locks himself. Arthur shrugs out of his coat and carefully drapes it over Eames's naked torso.

He stands and straightens his shirt before making it back over to the creature clawing it's way towards the door on it's belly. Arthur hooks his foot under the flabby body and flips him over onto his back. Foot placed over the sternum, Arthur pushes down until he hears the creak of bones. The man's mouth is moving but there is no sound. The words look like “please” and “sorry” and “oh god”. Arthur lets the chains drop heavy to the ground with a thud close enough to the guard's head to make the man flinch and start to cry. Arthur unbuttons his cuffs and rolls up his sleeves just as casually as he would before doing the dishes. Then, bending, he picks up the chain, twisting it a bit, adjusting his grip. A slight narrowing of his eyes the only change in expression before seven pounds of metal smashes into the guard's skull. Again and again until the twitching stops and the gurgling sound of choking on blood quiets.

Arthur finds the man responsible and sends him a few of the guards fingers, wrapped in a program from his daughter's latest dance recital.

The little finger on Eames's right hand never heals properly.

–

“It's the last place they'd suspect.” That quick grin Cobb flashes almost makes him forget the last three years. There, for a second, is the man he met in that classroom with chalk dust on his sleeve. 

Showing up in Mombasa, with a bounty on his head large enough to have made Eames actually pause (not for very long, but he has to admit he did), is the exact kind of insanity that is becoming more and more associated with Cobb these days. 

None of them are ever truly safe, leading the lives they do, but sometimes Eames needs the illusion. Arthur, with his even tone, his words thought out and measured. Arthur with his attention to detail, his scenarios, probabilities and possibilities. Arthur always walking a step or two on point, always having to be the first one to enter a room. Arthur who sleeps between him and the door with his gun tucked under the pillow. 

Just once, he would love to see what Arthur looks like in the morning, with the sunrise warm and waking over both of them. He finds it terribly out of character. Arthur (paranoid as always) would become suspicious. Arthur relies on stability and organization. Eames thrives on imagination and improvisation. There is no room for either of those things in Arthur's life. Eames doubts he would want them even if there was.

Knowing the value of a graceful exit, to always leave them wanting more, Eames always sleeps by the window.

–

Eames is only half conscious, half awake, half aware of his own name. 

Arthur is snarling, feral with blood bright across his teeth. in a way that Eames has never seen, has never even imagined.

There's a hole in his shoulder but he can still raise his arm to fire. It hurts. It fucking hurts, but these are the things they are acclimated to. By the time he aims, it's over. Arthur is standing in the middle of the room with four men dropped at his feet. Eames isn't sure if the room is hazy from the gun smoke or his vision failing him. He suspects the latter because there's a strange tingling starting at his wrist. His lips feel numb. Arthur strips off his tie and cinches it tight around Eames's shoulder. “Oh Darling, not the Lanvin,” he tuts, but it comes out slurred. Something dark flickers over Arthur's face in the corner of his vision.

There is a sharp pain in his neck. He might cry out but he isn't sure. He doesn't hear anything and Arthur's pocketing a syringe, face no longer beastly or shadowed. He looks just as he always does when especially irritated with Eames.

Still, he hauls Eames to his feet and half drags him towards the exit. They make it two blocks, doubling back once and cutting down three alleys before coming to a building that turns skeletal as it reaches up to the sky.

Arthur pulls Eames tight against his chest. They are both covered in blood, not all of it theirs. His hands and shoulders aching from recoils, gun powder stuck in his throat.

He is folded around Eames in an empty bathtub of a half finished apartment complex site in Dubai. It's narrow even for him, cold and unforgiving. The die in his pocket digs into his thigh and he is absurdly grateful for it.

He'd managed to coax Eames's slack hand around his poker chip without touching it himself. His pale, thin fingers laced over top of Eames's broader ones, keeping them closed tight.

Eames is muttering in Russian. Before this job, the only Russian Eames knew was to ask for a cigarette, order vodka from the top shelf, and to say “Don't mind him, he's just a little uptight.” Eames knows that one in most languages.

Eames is pale, trembling and wild-eyed. Thin skin on the inside of his wrist grey, bruised broken veins climbing up his arm like branches. An angry red tear where Arthur had ripped the IV out.

Lips pushed against Eames's ear, Arthur's breath is hot, voice rumbling and urgent. He tells him stories of drinking caipirinhas in Brazil, the view from the roof of the hotel in Oslo, washing the stickiness from their skin under a waterfall in Malaysia.

The blood on their clothes dries, stiffens and scrapes at their skin.

–

Rain rattles the windows in Dhaka and lightning glances over their bodies like a photograph being taken. Bangladesh will be waiting for Eames tomorrow but tonight there is only Arthur and the storm.

Eames's gasps. “Territorial, aren't we Arthur?” 

Arthur huffs hot and damp over the bruise he has brought to the surface across Eames's hipbone. “Do you belong to me then, Mr. Eames?” treacherous mouth still hovering. Eames can feel his smile against it, the little bastard.

Their breathing is ragged and loud against the quiet. Arthur's heart beating against the inside of his thigh, just above the scar on his knee from the Capilli job, and Eames feels it in every bone. He swears he can tell the thread-count of Arthur's shirt against his skin. The world is hinging on sensation, air thick and heavy, like the blink just before a dream collapses, breaking through walls, overwhelming them, burying them in the rubble. His fingers twitch reflexively for his totem, but he is naked, hard and trembling beneath the familiar weight of Arthur.

Arthur lifts his eyes, over the planes of Eames stomach, his chest, and meets Eames's own who is looking down on Arthur from his position propped up on the pillows. Eames's lips part, flushed and wet, shuddering at the sensation, at how wide Arthur's pupils are in the dark, the question hanging above them like the smell of ozone outside.

“Yes,” the hand that had craved it's totem reaches down and brushes a strand of hair from Arthur's forehead, smoothes over the lines with his thumb. 

Arthur leans into the touch, kisses his palm, the inside of his wrist. Lingers over the scar from Dubai which is raised and dark, newly healed. They are watching each other and it feels easy, to say these things in the dark, in a foreign city. When they are feeling boundless and immortal from gunfire and car chases. Arthur is holding his breath, mouth undemanding at the crook of Eames's elbow, eyes dark and waiting.

Eames licks his lips, swallows 

“I always have.” 

and the words barely fade before Arthur rises, rolling over him like a wave, drowning Eames who is surprisingly at peace with it, drunk on the salt of Arthur's skin and hands running across his chest like streams. 

Lightning, the room filled with white, and there is only Arthur. His beautiful, lethal Arthur with his body like a weapon. Hard as gun metal, quick and sharp as a knife. Arthur who kills men with his bare hands. Who has died a thousand times in a thousand dreams. With his boyish face and his eyes so worn and tired. His lover, his rival, his brother in arms. Safety in a well-tailored suit, keeping secrets and maintaining mystery. They have killed, fought, and died with each other, for each other, in the others arms and at the others hands. Arthur who thinks around corners and in paradoxes, who bests him three out of five sparring (because he is younger and slippery and fights dirty). Who has sank into Eames's skin and turned his heart against him.

Thunder and Eames shuddering beneath the sound, crying out Arthur's name. He is there, like every time Eames calls for him. Chanting “Eames. Eames. Eames,” pushing the name into his mouth with his tongue. A litany, a confession, a vow to remind Eames who he is, whose he is and what they together make. Holds him together when he is splitting at the seams. 

–

When everything is noise and he can't remember, Arthur reminds him. Reminded him in that shitty little hovel in Dubai. Reminds him a hundred times all over the world. In hotel rooms, in safe houses, on crowded city streets. With sweat and blood and naked skin.

Eames brings Arthur back to his humanity. Has this annoying habit of showing up before Arthur even knows he needs him. A getaway car screeching up just as he is jumping down the last three stairs and throwing open the door. Quick, thief fingers pulling shrapnel from his calf and stitching him back together. A force that pulls him away when the enemy is dead but Arthur is still wants to hit and hurt and break.

Eames tenderly, patiently wiping the blood from his face and hands. The blood that isn't his, when he is still shaking with adrenaline, hyper-vigilant. And in the time between Eames finishing with one hand and starting on the other, Arthur's freshly clean hand is brushing against the side of his face, clumsy and beseeching. The honesty of the gesture breaks Eames's heart.

Mal taught Arthur to be human but Eames keeps him that way, brings him back over and over again.


End file.
